The objective of this blog to share development in rural areas across the world. It is a space where scientists, professionals and anyone interested can share cases studies, methodologies and developments both from the South and the North.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

The Water and Land Ressource Center is about to launch a new database for Ethiopia

The Water and Land Resource Center
in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is a 1 year old independent institute affiliated to
Addis Ababa University, in close collaboration with the ministry of agriculture
and the ministry of water and energy. The Resource Centre is supported by the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC),
capitalizing on the 30 years of hydro-sedimentology data collected in 7 smaller
watersheds in Ethiopia (one in Eritrea) by Professor Hans Hurni and colleagues
from the university of Bern, Switzerland.

The objectives of the center are
much broader than just data management. It has four components:

1. Establishing an open access and
modern resource database and information management system.

2. Establishing learning watersheds to
demonstrate sustainable water and land management by using combined efforts of
research and development actions.

3. A collection of
hydro-sedimentology and land management data observed in observatories and
learning watersheds.

4. Improved capacities at all levels
involved in water and land management.

In this context of database and
information system management, the center is about to launch a new database on
land and water management, called WALRIS (Water and Land Resources Information
System) . It is a web based database which initially will allow to consult,
visualize and use the 30 years of data generated by Center for Development and Environment of University
of Bern in collaboration with the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and
Agriculture Research Institutes at different levels. It is also planning to gradually make non-commercial and openly
available spatial and non-spatial data from the ministry of agriculture, the
ministry of water and energy and from other research and academic institutes available.

The center has been organizing itself since
mid-2011 as part of the phase one of the
project. A stakeholder meeting took place this week to plan phase II. In this
phase, the CGIAR has been recognized as a key partner to link up with. IWMI is
already in discussion to discover where the synergies are, both in data
collection and sharing. There is definitely scope for other CGIAR centers to
join the effort on land and water management and make use of the web-based GIS platform
to make our data better accessible to others.